Pat Trueman and the U.S. "sex culture"

Pat Trueman is a lawyer. He works for the Alliance Defense Fund, a right-wing Christian group that travels the country defending fundamentalists who want to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state in this country. Trueman has also been on the front lines of the fight against pornography for many years.

At one time Pat Trueman was "chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.

According to onenewsnow.com, which is a right-wing Christian "news" outfit, Trueman believes that "the easy availability of online pornography is contributing to another, much more dangerous problem," and that problem is child prostitution.

Child prostitution may be a problem in some of our larger cities. It has been a reality in many cities around the world for many years. It is probably not going to go away. Trueman doesn't tell us how much of a problem it is in America. He says it is "booming" in this country, but provides no evidence to back up that claim.

He also neglects to provide any evidence for his statement that "the easy availability of online pornography" is contributing to this child prostitution. How does he know that? He doesn't, but from his particular religious point of view, it makes sense. I have a feeling that there are many reasons for child prostitution, including hopelessness, despair and poverty.

Trueman wants to blame it all on America's "sex culture," whatever that means. "The problem that you're seeing with child prostitution," he says, "is a problem that is booming in cities across America. It's the sex culture that we live in."

I have no truck with child prostitution or any other type of child abuse. The whole idea is nauseating and those involved are the lowest of the low!

But I also see no need to try to pump up our concern for this dastardly trafficking in human beings by posing problematic situations which may or may not be true. Mr. Trueman needs to define what he means by "sex culture," and from what I can tell, he has no evidence whatsoever that Internet porn has anything do with child prostitution.

I don't know where Mr. Trueman stands personally on the First Amendment, but my guess is that as a member of the Alliance Defense Fund, he would have no trouble banning most, if not all, sexually explicit books, magazines, or activities - in the name of family, decency, and the Christian god, of course.

It's always a bit frightening in a free society to have people like this running around making claims that are not based on fact but rather on theological propositions. There's no end to the damage they can do.

Question: If this is such a terrible problem, and if this terrible problem is "booming in cities across America," why did Mr. Trueman leave his position with the Justice Department to spend hours and hours "researching" pornography on the Internet, and to engage in providing a legal defense for kids who want to impose their Christian beliefs and practices on our public schools?

And I always find it curious, this talk about the "sex cultures" and lack of standards and morals in our modern era. I cannot help but be reminded of the biblical Lot who tried to pimp his daughters to the men of Sodom to save his own worthless ass.

They didn't even have the Internet back in those days!

Here's another site for information on porn crusader, Pat Trueman: